full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Alan Kay: A powerful idea about ideas

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So, another thing that we do is to confuse aldut sosttiiaopihcn with the actual understanding of some principle. So a kid who's 14 in high school gets this version of the Pythagorean theorem, which is a truly subtle and interesting poorf, but in fact it's not a good way to strat learning about mathematics. So a more direct one, one that gives you more of the feeling of math, is something closer to Pythagoras' own proof, which goes like this: so here we have this triangle, and if we surround that C square with three more trialgens and we copy that, notice that we can move those triangles down like this. And that leaves two open areas that are kind of suspicious ... and bigno. That is all you have to do. And this kind of proof is the kind of proof that you need to learn when you're learning mectmtaiahs in order to get an idea of what it mnaes before you look into the, literally, 1,200 or 1,500 proofs of Pythagoras' theorem that have been discovered.

Open Cloze


So, another thing that we do is to confuse _____ ______________ with the actual understanding of some principle. So a kid who's 14 in high school gets this version of the Pythagorean theorem, which is a truly subtle and interesting _____, but in fact it's not a good way to _____ learning about mathematics. So a more direct one, one that gives you more of the feeling of math, is something closer to Pythagoras' own proof, which goes like this: so here we have this triangle, and if we surround that C square with three more _________ and we copy that, notice that we can move those triangles down like this. And that leaves two open areas that are kind of suspicious ... and _____. That is all you have to do. And this kind of proof is the kind of proof that you need to learn when you're learning ___________ in order to get an idea of what it _____ before you look into the, literally, 1,200 or 1,500 proofs of Pythagoras' theorem that have been discovered.

Solution


  1. adult
  2. triangles
  3. bingo
  4. proof
  5. means
  6. sophistication
  7. mathematics
  8. start

Original Text


So, another thing that we do is to confuse adult sophistication with the actual understanding of some principle. So a kid who's 14 in high school gets this version of the Pythagorean theorem, which is a truly subtle and interesting proof, but in fact it's not a good way to start learning about mathematics. So a more direct one, one that gives you more of the feeling of math, is something closer to Pythagoras' own proof, which goes like this: so here we have this triangle, and if we surround that C square with three more triangles and we copy that, notice that we can move those triangles down like this. And that leaves two open areas that are kind of suspicious ... and bingo. That is all you have to do. And this kind of proof is the kind of proof that you need to learn when you're learning mathematics in order to get an idea of what it means before you look into the, literally, 1,200 or 1,500 proofs of Pythagoras' theorem that have been discovered.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
long time 2
human history 2
larger shape 2
discrete differential 2
car turn 2
steering wheel 2
million dollars 2


Important Words


  1. actual
  2. adult
  3. areas
  4. bingo
  5. closer
  6. confuse
  7. copy
  8. direct
  9. discovered
  10. fact
  11. feeling
  12. good
  13. high
  14. idea
  15. interesting
  16. kid
  17. kind
  18. learn
  19. learning
  20. leaves
  21. literally
  22. math
  23. mathematics
  24. means
  25. move
  26. notice
  27. open
  28. order
  29. principle
  30. proof
  31. proofs
  32. pythagorean
  33. school
  34. sophistication
  35. square
  36. start
  37. subtle
  38. surround
  39. suspicious
  40. theorem
  41. triangle
  42. triangles
  43. understanding
  44. version